The FBI has asked law enforcement agencies who responded to Pulse nightclub to withhold records from the public, according to officials.

A June 20 letter from the FBI, attached to the City or Orlando’s lawsuit over withholding 911 calls and other records from 25 media outlets including the Orlando Sentinel, was also sent to the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office with instructions pertaining to how they should respond to records requests.

The letter requests that agencies deny inquiries and directs departments to “immediately notify the FBI of any requests your agency received”…

Government agencies are refusing to release basic public records about Omar Mateen and the deadly Orlando shootings….

The Tampa Bay Times, for instance, asked the Department of Agriculture for information about Mateen’s security guard license, which he obtained almost a decade ago. A spokeswoman at the agriculture department says the FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement must authorize the information’s release.

The Times also reached out to the Fort Pierce Police Department asking for all cases in which Mateen, his relatives and others were named as a suspect, victim or witness. In response to this routine request, the agency refused and said the documents are part of an active criminal investigation.

Two dozen media outlets have asked the Orlando Police Department for 911 calls and radio communications. The city will not release these communications.

An attorney for those outlets sent a letter to the city on Tuesday, explaining that the records should not be exempt from disclosure….

Florida has broad public records laws that normally allow for the release of these and other records.

As details continue to emerge surrounding Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, so do the holes in the narrative.

Case in point, last week’s statement by the shooter’s employer, G4S, the world’s largest security company, that he had passed a 2007 psychological test without any problems. The document that G4S submitted to Florida state listed psychologist Carol Nudelman. But after news of the document was reported, by the Miami Herald and other media, Dr. Nudelman, whose last name is now Blumberg, issued a statement saying she hadn’t evaluated any tests for the security company after 2005. The attorney for Nudelman (or Blumberg) added on said Sunday that she did not live in Florida in September 2006 when the psychological assessment was purportedly performed.

Before Omar Mateen gunned down 49 patrons at the LGBTQ Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, the FBI attempted to induce his participation in a terror plot….

While self-styled terror experts and former counter-terror officials have criticized the FBI for failing to stop Mateen before he committed a massacre, the new revelation raises the question of whether the FBI played a role in shifting his mindset toward an act of violence.

It is possible that contact with undercover informants posing as extremists may have radicalized or at the very least, planted the seeds for the violence Mateen would eventually carry out years later. The public, press, and America’s elected representatives must demand answers from the FBI regarding the nature of their investigation including who the FBI’s informants posed as, and what ideas they attempted to lure Mateen into their practiced methods of entrapment with.

Normally, when the FBI identifies a Muslim mouthing off about joining ISIS, they throw one or more informants at him, develop his trust, then have him press a button or buy a plane ticket to Syria, which they use to arrest the guy.

That didn’t happen here. While they did record the conversations between these informants and Mateen, they never got him to do something they could arrest him for.

And I suspect we won’t get answers why they didn’t, though it seems an absolutely critical question for assessing how the FBI investigates terrorism. If FBI’s chosen method of using informants only works with the dopes and not the real threats, all it does is juice the FBI’s prosecution numbers, without keeping us safe.

The FBI investigated and attempted to trap eventual Orlando shooter Omar Mateen after a 2013 incident in which he allegedly threatened to kill a deputy….

As part of its investigation, the Press Journal reported, the FBI examined Mateen’s travel history, phone records, acquaintances, and even planted a confidential informant in the courthouse to ‘lure Omar into some kind of act and Omar did not bite.’“…

Contacted by The Daily Beast about the report of a sting on Mateen, an FBI spokesperson issued a terse reply: “We cannot assist you on this.”